Unofficial Rules of FaceBook

1. Too Good to be True
   
   WOW! Because it's their 55th birthday, [fill in name of grocery chain here] is giving away vouchers with £60!  It even includes a bar code so it must be legitimate!
   
   
   
   Really?  This retail chain has seriously decided to commit financial suicide by giving one billion people a voucher for tens of pounds of stuff?  More likely a scammer is using this as a way to con you out of your personal details, bank account info and more.
   
   If something seems to be too good to be true, it's worth checking out on Snopes or Hoax Slayer before doing anything, especially something like posting it on Facebook.


2. Just Wow - I never knew that!
   
   Probably because it isn't true.  See the photo below - just goes to show climate change is b/s, right?
   
   
   
   This comes squarely into the area of confirmation bias.  You have strong views in one area and someone tells you something that just "proves" to all those doubters that you're right.  Once again, Snopes is your friend.


3. The Sky is Falling
   
   This is typically a doomsday post.  This is also typically a hoax.  If something seems to be too bad to be true, it probably isn't.  Here is an example: there is, apparently, an Oriental conspiracy to kill you with vaccines.  S-u-r-e ...
   


4. Moral Blackmail / Controlling Behaviour
   
   A friend's mother, who was a beautiful person, has just recovered from (or, worse, not recovered from) a dreadful disease.
   
   That's sad.
   
   What follows is sadder: a bit of moral blackmail and quite extraordinary controlling behaviour. You are expected to copy and paste (not just repost) your friend's post.  This may be accompanied by a threat along the following lines "My true friends will do this.  I know who they are and I'll be watching."
   
   People, there are a million good causes out there.  Feel free to share yours but don't expect all your friends to adopt them.  And don't, ever, threaten someone who is your friend, or they won't be.


5. Press 9 and see what happens
   
   This is a "curiosity killed the cat" post.  You're the cat.
   
   
   
   
   What's happening here is that someone wants to hoover up lots of FaceBook userids, perhaps to target ads at you (or worse).  So they rely on you to put yourself on their list: by clicking "Like" or typing something.
   
   Needless to say, nothing happens to the picture when you do this.  You just set yourself up to get more junk or scamming.

Have any others that are your favourites?  Let me know and I'll post them here!